how spiritual...

I've recently attended a large Christian music festival and, once again, I am left with mixed emotions/thoughts.

I am disturbed by the plethora of hyper-spiritualised events and performances that abounded all throughout the festival. In other words, I am weary of the tendency of modern Christians to view only some parts of their lives as 'spiritual.' As if the rest of their lives aren't supposed to be?

This spiritual compartmentalisation is usually on steroids at such Christian festivals. You can be worshipping 'hard' one moment, and then flip the switch and engage in other less spiritual activities, such as texting, flirting with girls/boys, eating, hanging out, dancing, etc. I even saw a young female worshipper with arms raised in praise, obviously not aware that the Playboy-bunny tattoo on her back was sending quite another message to any men/boys behind her.

In between bands, various advertisements played. Ranging from appeals to support poverty-striken children around the world on one hand (the goal of this group was to gain 1,000 sponsors - which I don't think they reached... 1,000 sponsors would have been less than 5% of the festival attendees.) to challenging teenagers to join the 'army' needed to make Christian music as cool as possible on the other. For me, personally, I know which one I will contribute to.

It seemed that every speaker, band and other various events had to be praised and exalted as being very important, spiritual, life-changing or whatever. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. If you're running such a festival, and charging people to get in, you're going to want to make it sound like the most spiritual thing since Pentecost.

I'm not Christianity-bashing (or Christian music festival bashing, either), I'm just concerned about the way our faith affects (or doesn't) our lives. Our entire lives, that is.

At the very heart of my concerns is the hyper-exaltation of certain people/places/times over other people/places/times. It seems to me that any time you hyper-spiritualise something, you end up hyper-UN-spiritualising something else.

This is dangerous.

This teaches young kids (indirectly, but very powerfully) that the gaps and spaces in between the 'spiritual' bits of their lives aren't as 'spiritual' as the other ones. So the all-too-common-result is a compartmentalised Christian mindset (and lifestyle).

In sharp contrast to this, the message of countless prophets in the Bible (Isaiah, Amos, Micah - not to mention our Lord Jesus) is that our moments of exuberant spirituality are worthless if we are not people of justice and mercy. Yes, it is not simply 'bits' of our life that are 'spiritual', but ALL of our lives are to be tempered, filtered and controlled by God's Spirit (for one of the best summaries of what this looks like practically, see Galatians 5:22-23).

We need to resist any suggestions (in any form or from any source) that some bits of our lives are more spiritual than other bits. The biblical challenge of discipleship to Jesus is a wholistic (all of your life) spiritual mission of love, patience, self-less-ness, humility, compassion, mercy and justice (and more). In God's strength, may we use ALL of our lives to this end.